The Watching Hour: Southland Tales

35mm presentation - Writer/ Director Richard Kelly’s long awaited follow-up to 2001 cult hit Donnie Darko starts with a literal bang: on July 4, 2005 a nuclear explosion in Texas ignites World War III. Jump to the future of 2008: while it occupies the entire Middle East and North Korea, the U.S Army has reinstated the draft. America is under lockdown --- but a revolution is ticking away in Venice, California. Amid the chaos is amnesia stricken action star Boxer Santaros (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), who has begun working on an explosive new screenplay (perhaps containing the secrets locked in his own head) with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a seductive adult film star. While researching a role for the film Boxer meets police officer Roland and his twin brother Ronald (both played by Sean William Scott), an Iraq veteran, who may both hold the key to a vast conspiracy involving alternative energy, the upcoming elections and, ultimately, the end of the world as we know it.
With its eclectic cast (including Miranda Richardson, Mandy Moore, Kevin Smith, Amy Poehler, Nora Dunn, Justin Timberlake, among others) and its vision of a world just moments away from our own, Southland Tales is a pop culture eruption that, as J. Hoberman (The Village Voice) admits, “may not be entirely coherent, but that's because there's so much it wants to say.”